Sunday, September 2, 2012

As well played as the first two games were, this one was every bit as ugly. And I'm not just talking about from a pitching standpoint. It was sloppy baseball in general, and that made it quite a chore to sit through despite the offensive fireworks and positive result.

Winning Player: Chris Nelson

Nelly only had one of the Rockies 11 hits, but it was the biggest in the game. It came in the 7th with Colorado trailing 9-7. Tyler Colvin had just sacrificed the tying runs into scoring position (because Jim Tracy is a genius or something), and Nelson said screw that, skip, I'm here to win. So he launched a three-run homer to straight away center to recapture the lead.

Turning Point: The Rockies had two big innings offensively, and need every bit of both to pull out this win. Of course one of those was the 7th thanks to Nelson's home run. The other was a seven-run 3rd in which they scored six more two-out runs. I swear they've doubled their season total of two-out runs in the last two days alone. And it's no surprise at all that they have won both of those games.

This looked a lot like his return start back on June 9. The Angels peppered him for 10 hits (all singles) in 3 1/3. Today, San Diego threw a home run and a double in there, but it was mostly Francis getting peppered by singles, and he also didn't get much help from his defense. Indecisiveness, sloppy technique, and missed cutoff men were abound, and each 90 feet allowed proved to be costly in one way or another.